Remember when sitcoms were dead in the water?

So remember how it wasn’t that long ago we announced the death of the live studio audience sitcom? Sure, we had an axe to grind. All that fake-sounding laughter is a comedy purist’s nightmare.

Still, no sooner had we chosen the coffin and bought a beautiful wreath for the occasion than Chuck Lorre came along with Two and a Half Men. Then How I Met Your Mother became really popular. Then Lorre returned the volley with Big Bang Theory.

The single camera or non-‘laffer’ comedies are still the ones that get the most attention from us but that doesn’t change the fact that people still enjoy the old-school studio audience comedies.

The networks in the US, trailing the zeitgeist, yet again, are now throwing everything they have at the half-hour comedy.

People like Mr. Lorre are particularly in demand this spring, amid a renaissance of sorts for the network TV sitcom, which not too long ago was pronounced terminally ill. On studio lots, where dozens of new shows are being fretted about and fought over ahead of the networks’ scheduling decisions in May, the number of sitcoms in development has spiked. “I think we’re on the cusp of a bull market for comedy,” said Kevin Reilly, Fox’s entertainment chief, whose No. 1 priority for the fall is adding more live-action comedies to his schedule.